The Reality of Sound Healing in a Technological World

When I began collecting singing bowls in the late 1990’s, there was a brand new book on the market. It was called “Sounds of Healing,” and was later retitled as “The Healing Power of Sound,” authored by the late oncologist, Mitchell Gaynor, M.D.

Sounds of Healing was my introduction to singing bowls. I was teaching university at the time and my students were finding health benefits in the voice and breathing exercises I taught them. I looked into the phenomenon and discovered the little known field of sound healing, heralded by Dr. Gaynor’s book.

In his book, Dr. Gaynor (who himself died of cancer), used singing bowls to help his cancer patients in their recovery process. He emphasizes throughout the book that the power of sound is to calm and soothe the patients, allowing for a better healing response from within.

Much like trees outside hospital windows have shown to speed recovery compared to views with no trees, sound is an effective adjunct to our natural healing process. However, in recent years, there has been an increase in the level of interest in sound healing and also an increase in the claims made by sound healers.

While sound and music has always been known to have soothing effects, today people repeat various theories about the healing power of sound, greatly exaggerating and distorting the effects. I do and have used singing bowls for their healing effects over the years. More than just soothing and relaxing, the vibrations can have specific beneficial effects.

There are certain situations where a simple vibration can help. For example, I had bronchitis in 2007 and I used a singing bowl to help clear the congestion in my chest. I went through a number of bowls until I found one that vibrated the right way. I could feel the vibration clearly in my chest and the vibration immediately helped me cough up some phlegm. T

his year, I had a serious problem with my thyroid. I have a large “toxic nodule,” a cyst growing on my thyroid which has caused my thyroid to be 5 times overactive. The nodule grew larger than a jumbo egg and caused me great discomfort. I had treatment that used a technology similar to sound which I will discuss by contrast.

When I got my diagnosis of hyperthyroidism but before I knew the size of the nodule, I tried using singing bowls on my thyroid. I went through several bowls, playing them and holding them next to my throat until I found one that clearly vibrated in the right area. I sat down and began self-treating with sound, using multiple bowls that produced similar effects.

I could feel it in the area of my thyroid but it caused my discomfort. I stopped after a few attempts because the feeling was one of irritation. Vibrating this growth did not seem helpful. It was possible, but not useful.

I remember an email I received back in 2008. It was a direct question, “which singing bowls can help cure my thyroid?”

Looking back today, I would have a more detailed response, including a warning that it may be counterproductive. My response at the time was, “no singing bowl can cure your thyroid. Singing bowls are acoustic instruments and the effects are mild. While they are very good at helping you relax and they feel incredibly soothing, there is no proof that sound can have real benefits to specific problems. If sound is so beneficial, it is still not known which notes or which types of vibrations could effect specific areas of the body. So, there is no real evidence that the gentle sounds of singing bowls have a large healing effect and if there was, there is no known correlation between such effect and the notes.”

The general idea I wish to convey about sound healing is that it is a physical process. When you play an instrument, the vibration travels through the air. It can vibrate your tissues and cause movement on a subtle level. This can have beneficial, neutral or negative effects.

When using singing bowls or other instruments for sound healing, it is important to note that this is how it works. It is vibration. We feel the vibration which is very soothing and relaxing. Our tissues also vibrate which can be either soothing or irritating depending on the situation. This is as far as sound healing with singing bowls goes in our conventional reality.

There are more subtle things going on, perhaps on a cellular, energetic or spiritual level. However, I am talking about the mundane use of instruments for vibrating tissues, a more conventional understanding of sound healing. While spiritual, emotional, psychological and mystical healing may also be done with singing bowls, let’s stick to medical healing because that is what most people seem to be asking.

The effects of sound on conventional healing is mild, mixed and not a replacement for medical care. The effects of singing bowls are not more profound than the effects of your own voice. In fact, using your voice is a more effective way to cause a healing response.

The main thing singing bowls do is to let you feel yourself. They provide a sort of biofeedback where you vibrate your tissues and then feel that vibration. In this way they are great for awareness, relaxation and mild issues like headaches and back pain.

Sound is used in medicine all the time. The real effective use of sound in healing is with technology. While the power of an acoustic instrument is limited, the effects of technology are much more powerful.

We all know about ultrasound, an amazing technology that uses sound to map out the inside of our body. Without it, we would never see an infant in the womb. It is an amazing technology that has been around for decades.

Another use of sound in healing is to destroy cancer cells, kidney stones and more. So called “sonic surgery” has been on the rise in recent years. While is it not technically sound, I received a similar treatment this month to cure my thyroid problem.

Rather than surgery to remove my thyroid, I received a treatment called Radiofrequency Ablation which is a non-surgical outpatient procedure, similar to a biopsy. They inserted a needle into the thyroid nodule and burned it with radio frequencies. The oscillation between frequencies creates heat and this heat is used to burn the cyst, which my body will then reabsorb over a period of several months.

After just two weeks, I began to feel better after suffering with debilitating symptoms for eight months. This is an amazing use of technology to remotely cure a serious condition without needing surgery. That is the real power of sound. I am confident as technology continues to improve, more precise and useful technologies will be invented that use sound in such a powerful way.

The power of vibration is real and undeniable. The problem with acoustic instruments like singing bowls is that they only tap a small amount of that power. That is a good thing, because too much sound is also extremely harmful. Sound can cause deafness, nerve damage and injury to internal organs. Sonic technology can also be used in weaponry. However, I am hopeful that the future of sound will be put to good and positive use, like the treatment I received and others like it. Technology can tap the healing ability of sound because it is exponentially more powerful. That is really what it takes.

So, when people ask me which singing bowls they should use to treat cancer, I tell them the bowls are soothing and will help them feel more well during the recovery process. However, the bowls are not powerful enough to help directly. To directly help cancer or other diseases, the greatly amplified power of technology is needed. The bowls just help, like a good friend.